Duplexed aptamers and fiber optic SPR sensors to enable continuous biosensing

Biomarker monitoring has become standard practice in various fields such as health care, environmental analysis, biotechnology, and food and beverage production, as it enables diagnosis, intervention, and quality control. However, this practice currently requires various tedious and time-consuming steps, including sampling, sample transportation, pretreatment, analysis, and data output, which limits the possibilities for rapid diagnosis and intervention. This can be overcome by applying continuous biosensors, which provide real-time information about the respective biomarker concentrations, and thereby enable direct and even feedback-controlled intervention. Unfortunately, these biosensors are still in their infancy, as various requirements need to be met in order to achieve this goal, being that no external reagents or multistep processes can be applied, and a dynamic and reversible signal should be obtained. Fiber optic surface plasmon resonance (FO-SPR)-based biosensors are promising tools to achieve continuous biosensing, as they provide realtime information about molecular binding events. However, owing to the need for amplification and regeneration steps which are often still associated with their use, they are currently only applied in batch assays rather than in a continuous manner. Duplexed aptamers (DAs) directly generate an amplified and reversible signal upon target binding without requiring external reagents or multistep processes, and are therefore promising tools to overcome the abovementioned needs and enable continuous measurements. However, until now, they have not yet been applied to achieve this goal. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to explore the potential of combining DAs with the FO-SPR platform for the development of a continuous biosensor.

Publication year:2022

Accessibility:Open